Company website - devise a custom-built solution or ride on top of an existing service?

Question

I've been asked to devise a website for a small organization (with limited funding) - with internal and external facing sides.

Internally it would allow sharing of documents, a blog, goal setting, more?

Externally it would provide a simple but nicely designed public statement about the company's services.

It may evolve over time.

Should this be a custom-built solution or does it make more sense to ride on top of a platform that provides this type of service (such as?)?

If it's a custom built-solution, I'm considering doing this in Rails - would there be something like this already built for Rails?

Answer 1

Django has an amazing admin function already built into the framework. It could potentially take care of all of the internals, and the external view can be shown to anyone who doesn't navigate to the admin.

It's at least one consideration if you're thinking of making a custom solution (which I might suggest if you believe the site will most likely grow.)

Answer 2

Depending on your resources, I would start off with an "as-is" solution that allows customization. This will give you the quickest "wins" from the company standpoint. Once the organization, and you, start to use and understand the benefits, you can start customizing pieces.

Answer 3

Depending on your budget Windchill does this. I believe it was once called GlobalVault (a much better, and more descriptive, name).

Answer 4

I've always found it frustrating to build on top of pre-existing platforms, especially when it comes time to extend the functionality. If it's up to you, I'd suggest to build it yourself. Pick a framework and design specifically around the needs of the company.

Rails is a nice choice if you're comfortable programming Ruby. Although, any modern MVC framework would be just as good.